Of Course, Cartman Already Was Taken

An Ohio woman who loves stock car racing named her newborn son Winston Iroc Nascar Yerian.

According to an item in Autoweek, Malinda Yerian said, “I always wanted to give my son a name that no one else had. He seems to like it because every time I say his name, he smiles from ear to ear.”

Trivia time: Who was MVP of the first Super Bowl in 1967?

New expense: Perhaps to cover new Manager Dusty Baker’s salary, the Chicago Cubs have raised ticket prices.

“Who can blame them?” asks Tom FitzGerald in the San Francisco Chronicle. “Toothpicks aren’t as cheap as they used to be.”

On the nose: Jose Canseco recently had a nose job, in hopes of getting some action roles in the movies. Wrote Jim Armstrong in the Denver Post: “I sure hope they don’t cast him as an outfielder. All those fly balls off the face were the reason he needed the nose job in the first place.”

Team player: Desmond Howard rates his 1997 Super Bowl MVP trophy ahead of his 1991 Heisman Trophy.

“When you play in the pros, a Super Bowl is what we all strive for in our profession,” he said. “Then to be crowned the MVP of that game, it doesn’t get any better than that.”

Phenom worship: After hearing Dick Vitale and Bill Walton “worship at the altar of high school phenom LeBron James on ESPN2,” Steve Hummer of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote, “I wasn’t sure if I was witnessing the next Magic Johnson or the next Dalai Lama.”

Good old days: When Seabiscuit won the Santa Anita Handicap in 1940, there were 68,526 spectators.

Horse racing doesn’t get that kind of crowd anymore, so when the story of Seabiscuit’s career was filmed recently, the stands at Santa Anita were filled with mannequins. Each had a hat, a painted face and a shirt painted in the clothing style of the era.

Wasted talent: With the power left-handed pitcher Mark Mulder of the Oakland Athletics displays on the golf course, it’s too bad he plays in the designated-hitter American League, where he doesn’t get to bat.

Mulder, who plays golf right-handed, won the longest-drive contest with a drive of 330 yards at a celebrity tournament on PGA West’s stadium course.

Sign him up: Kevin McHale’s 9-year-old son, Tommy, asked his dad, the Minnesota Timberwolves’ vice president, what cloning was. As related by Bob Sansevere of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, McHale explained that cloning meant you could make a duplicate of somebody, sort of like a human Xerox.

“So you’re saying we can make another Michael Jordan and get him to play for the Wolves,” said Tommy.

Trivia answer: Bart Starr, Green Bay quarterback, in a 35-10 Packer victory over Kansas City in the Coliseum.

And finally: Kate Mason, wife of Minnesota Gopher football Coach Glen Mason, might be a better motivator than her husband, says Sid Hartman of the Minneapolis Star-Bulletin.

Kate teaches at Risen Christ school in Minneapolis and in a recent project to benefit a children’s home, her class collected more than 3,000 pairs of socks.

-- Shav Glick